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career planning

Career Advice

There’s no dishonor in being fired (most of the time)

September 7, 2018

So you “get fired” – what does that really mean? And should you feel bad, or is it an opportunity to review where you really belong.

Let’s start with the word. Fired. The web has a variety of etymologies for the word fired being applied to losing ones job but the version I grew up with is that when a craftsman was very bad at his job (say… working on a Medieval cathedral) and he was kicked off the crew his tools would be thrown into the fire (so he could not continue), as opposed to the craftsman who loses his job because times are slow in which case he is given the “sack” – he put his tools into his sack and left.

People get “fired” for a whole variety of reasons and in the majority of the cases it has little, if anything, to do with how good they actually are. They may lose their job because a company is downsizing, or reducing a group because a project is over, or the team/task is being moved to a cheaper location. I know a fantastic Bay Area VP who lost her job because the team was moved to Denver by the acquiring PE firm and she said no thank you (even though the severance was pathetically small).

A person may lose their job because they were in the wrong job in the first place: the job was simply not a good fit for their skills and it’s a shame they, and the hiring manager, did not figure that out up front. This is a great opportunity to get feedback, get coaching about where the fit would be better, maybe make an inventory of skills and satisfaction and figure out a slightly different career (see my blog post on this here).

I’ve seen great sales people fail, and get fired, because they switched industry and, without a deep knowledge of the product they are selling, they never quite grok the new sales process well enough to make quota, but they are still great sales people.

Sometimes people get fired because they challenge their boss to a point where the boss feels threatened. If you work for a weak manager this is always a risk, so find a strong person to work for. This happens to senior executives who go over their bosses heads to the CEO, or even to the board. If you find yourself in this situation don’t be naïve. Know that if you lose faith in your boss (or know they are doing something really wrong and won’t listen to you) and go over his or her head there is a 90% probability you’ll lose your job. Even bona fide whistle blowers lose their jobs in most cases.

You can even sometimes see executives lose their jobs because someone has to be sacrificed (to the SEC, or major investors) and the board is not willing to let the CEO take the fall. Yes, this happens.

And then we have the whole recent crop of media moguls, executives and CEOs who have been fired for breaching some part of the sexual harassment code of the company. What’s fascinating, and worrying, about this trend is we have the whole spectrum from the ghastly Harvey Weinstein to CEOs being fired for having a relationship which breaches the company’s rule for relationships within the company, to  “code of conduct” reasons where the company does not say why (but they say in their press release that it is unrelated to the business). My biggest worry about boards acting as judge and jury on sexual harassment cases (oversight of which is loooooong overdue, trust me) is that we could get a backlash and future serious cases of harassment will get ignored. If the #metoo movement sticks and creates permanent change that’s a good thing, but with most board members still being male (and too often not wanting to deal with harassment issues that come up) I do hope boards don’t get bored and stop paying attention because too many marginal cases come up.

So how to think about it if you have been let go? Unless you have done something really wrong like steal from the company or sexually harass a coworker or let a customer down through your own negligence or missed days of work and then shown up high as a kite (all of which I have fired people for) then your “firing” has little to do with your worth as a professional or a human being. It has to do with your fit in the job you found yourself in, or the circumstances of the company. So you are still great. Don’t let being fired cause you to doubt it.

Photo: Musée de Cluny, Paris © 2018 Penny Herscher

Career Advice

Managing the switchbacks of your career

July 18, 2018

A successful career is rarely a straight line up the slope. It is so often a weaving up through experiences and it’s important to recognize how and when to weave.

I did a coaching session yesterday where just this question came up. This time the individual had years of engineering, both as a stellar software engineer and also as a manager and can feel he wants to do more – can do more – and knows he needs to broaden his skillset.

I have a handful of principles which can be helpful when you are wanting to grow and create more upward momentum in your career:

  1. Make sure you are in a critical path for the company (and this will vary by industry). For tech companies success hinges on sales (revenue and cash) and product. In, and in-between, these functions there will be a number of critical roles and projects. These could be supporting the top customers, could be developing a handful of critical new relationships, could be bringing a new product to market. Learn what these are and which would be i) new to you, ii) challenging for you and iii) valuable to the company.
  2. Make sure you advocate for a new position you can be successful at if you work hard and learn fast (which I assume you would!). It’s important that you succeed in each role you take on even if it’s a bit rocky as you come up the learning curve. It’s OK to make short term tactical mistakes in your career, it’s not OK to make strategic ones.
  3. Stay visible. In some companies a tour away from HQ is truly valued but in others it may be the kiss of death for future promotion because you are out of sight and out of mind. If you do decide to step away from HQ to stretch yourself – for example to China or DC – agree on a time frame with your management (e.g. 2 years) and be sure to discuss what you would be eligible for when you come back, but before you go.
  4. Be aggressive – that you are very focused on personal growth – but humble  – that you know you have a lot to learn. I’ve had too many engineers tell me they know they’d be good in sales while massively underestimating how truly skilled great sales people are, and too many sales people sure they can do marketing (better than marketing is doing it) with no comprehension of what it takes. If you have not worked in a job I guarantee you underestimate it, so be humble.
  5. Be direct. It’s rare, especially in small companies, that your executives are sitting around thinking about taking risk with you to broaden your career outside of what’s immediately expedient for them so don’t beat around the bush.

If you’ve been in the same role for 3 years look up, and across, and consider stretching yourself in to a new role – unless this is truly what you want to do for the rest of your working life.

Photo: From the garden of La Foce in Tuscany © 2012 Penny Herscher

Career Advice

Top 3 things to look for in your first job

December 17, 2015 Leave a comment

It can be hard to find that first job, and sometimes you need to take
whatever you can get to start your career. But whether it is your very
first job or a job search in the first five years of your career, there
are three critical things you should not settle without.

1. A great manager

Having
a great manager early on will by far create the strongest impact toward
your long-term growth. Working for someone who is talented, generous
with their time, and willing to teach you can be a powerful jumpstart.
And working for a turkey is both demotivating and a waste of your time.
Remember, for every way to do something well, there are a thousand ways
to do it badly. Every year counts early on, so partner up with a strong
leadership team, make sure that you are efficient with time and sponge
every skill possible when you are young, hungry and hopefully don’t need
much sleep. Strong management will steer you onto projects that stretch
you and teach you, and catch you when you stumble. Poor managers come
in a variety of flavors: micro managers, absentee managers, inconsistent
managers, and the list goes on, but they share one characteristic, they
deprive you of valuable learning. So pick wisely. Interview your
potential manager so you get a sense of how much they will help you
grow.

2. Growth

Just as a rising tide
floats all boats, finding a thriving environment early on will create an
opportunity for advancement. Think about the people who landed early in
companies like Google and LinkedIn. Were they any smarter than their
peers who joined loser companies? Probably not. But the diligent,
hard-working ones took advantage of the extraordinary emerging
opportunities to grow their own careers, fast. Even in modestly
flourishing/booming times, you will find that growth creates
opportunity. Early in your career, you should be alert for new tasks,
projects and be sure to volunteer and raise your hand up when companies
are searching for aggressive new talent. Take on new challenges, be a
problem solver and stretch your skill set. Stagnant companies make it
difficult to do this, so stay alert for rising tides.

3. Visibility into the business

Too
often I talk with people early in their career, and they don’t
understand the Profit and Loss principles of their company. Being able
to distinguish between decisions that help or hurt the business is
pivotal. Insist on acquiring visibility of cash flows from customer
reports, sales deals, marketing expenses and product development costs.
Looking at the cash trail of a company early on is essential to
understanding how the company makes money. Whether you are the egghead
designing a new product (which will make money), or you are the inside
sales rep selling (bringing money in) or you are the accountant working
on the P&L (watching the money) you want to see it and understand
it. That way, later in your career when you are making decisions that
directly impact the growth, profit or loss of your own company, or the
company you work for, you will have a visceral feel for how the
financials of a company actually work. And if you don’t understand basic
finance in the first 5 years of your career take classes until you do.
The knowledge is well worth giving up a few evenings for.

 Often, I
am contacted by people who want a little coaching as they start their
careers or who are looking for a change in direction. And so often I am
asked my opinion about whether they should go and get an MBA. There are
some circumstances where an MBA is worth the time and money – for
example if you want to switch from engineering to finance – but in most
cases it isn’t. It’s my belief, after managing so many talented people
both with MBAs and without, that in most cases these three things are
fundamental: a great manager, a growing company, and getting yourself
familiar with the money trail.

Leadership

Being CEO is your last job

February 11, 2013 Leave a comment

I often end up in the same conversation with ambitious entrepreneurs. They want to run their own business… they have an idea, or are frustrated with their current position, they are building a plan to get to being CEO of their own company and they want advice.

Thursday evening I was in just such a conversation with a talented pending entrepreneur – and it’s a coaching moment. Before you get too wedded to the idea it’s important to think through how long you plan to be CEO for. 2 years, 5 years, 10 years… or as long as it takes.

The reality is that unless you are fired by your board, or your company’s life ends (by being acquired or failing), this is the last job you’ll ever have. You don’t get to just quit when you don’t like it any more – too many employees and investors and customers depend on you. It’s not hard to think about staying with your company “forever” when it’s an exciting new startup that you believe in. But it’s important to think through how you’ll feel if it’s not i.e. if it’s not meeting your expectations.

It seems a romantic idea to run a company but I have seen a few CEOs really struggle in the long haul with their spouse’s lack of support, worry about their long term income prospects, their need to pay for kids college fees and the long term effects on their health when the company they dreamed of doesn’t happen.

It’s very important before you sign up to lead a company, whether it’s yours, an existing founder’s or a spin out to be sure you have the ability to stick with it as long as you are needed. Don’t do it unless you can see yourself sticking it out no matter the outcome. But if you can visualize yourself in the saddle for more than 10 years then go for it!

p.s. Clearly this isn’t the case if you are the CEO of a public company. In
that case the turnover rate is high in the first 2 years, and on average
it’s now 8.4 years,
but in the public company case there are established processes for
succession planning so it’s easier to move on if you want to.

image: http://ceobarbieworld.blogspot.com/

Career Advice, Equality

How to think about your career path

November 5, 2009 1 Comment

I was asked to speak to a mentoring group at our audit firm – Frank Rimmerman – this morning. It was an early morning group – all women – all accountants but in different roles: auditors, internal accountants and outsource accounting. All under 40, the majority under 35.

Since it was an early morning session, and I only had 45 minutes, I decided to take a casual approach and discuss three basic guiding principles to help the audience structure their thinking about their career path.

After a preamble about the path my career had taken I walked through the following three principles:

1. Think about your career as a pyramid, not a ladder, and so think about the set of skills you need to build up over the first 10-15 years of your career. It’s important to have a realistic view of what you are currently good at, but also what the gaps are in your skillset, and then to pick opportunitities either within the firm, or if need be switch firm, in order to fill in the critical gaps.

In my case I shared the time when I wanted to be a CEO but got the candid feedback from a VC that I would never be recruited to run a startup unless I had experience managing a P&L. Hard to hear, but great advice, and at that point I set out to get a GM job so I could learn P&L management.

2. The people you work with and for are far more important than your title or how much money you make. There are 1000+ ways to do something wrong for every 1 way there is to do something right. Working for high quality people, working with high quality people is critical at the early stages of your career (well it’s always important but it is especially important when you are on the steepest part of your learning curve). It is 1000 times more efficient to see and learn the right ways early on.

In my case I have a viewpoint that life is short, we spend many hours every day at work, and it is simply not worth the time to work with and for people you don’t respect and that you can’t learn from. You don’t have to like them. You do need to respect them. Pick a high quality firm to work for.

3. You are responsible for your brand, you must take control of your own PR. It is true in life that people think of you what you think of yourself. They see the you you project to them. As a women in particular you need to be very aware of the projection you give – your confidence, your willingness to speak up, your courage in volunteering for hard jobs. Men often understand this early on – society rewards confidence and even brashness in a man, but while social society does not reward that in a woman (remember you are supposed to wait to be asked to the prom), work society gives opportunities to the confident. So – take charge of your own brand.

Think about the funny side of this and you’ll realize how true it is. Women often excel at self deprecation – how many times has it happened to you (if you are a woman) that when someone compliments you on what you are wearing you respond with “really, I got it on sale” or “really, you don’t think it makes me look fat?”. Men just don’t respond that way, they just say “thank you”.

I enjoyed talking with the Frank Rimmerman team – they have different issues being in an accounting firm, and yet many of the same issues – how to figure out the catalog of skills they need, how to get mentoring, the child-rearing challenge, and how to network. I was glad to be another voice in the discussion and to share some of my life lessons.